Kraftwerk, the robot-obsessed German band behind the classic electropop album “Autobahn,” have to be happy about this: Germany’s Autobahn may serve as the starting line for the race to a completely automated highway system. Germany’s highway system is famous for the relative lack of speed restriction, with certain vehicles being allowed to go at any speed the driver pleases. The Autobahn is also one of the longest highway systems in the world.
In other words, we’re talking trial by fire when the first automated cars hit the roads.
The Autobahn sounds scary to those of us accustomed to reasonable speed limits, but while the system accounts for 31 percent of all road traffic in Germany, it only accounts for 13 percent of the country’s traffic deaths, with a ratio of fewer than two deaths per billion-kilometers-traveled. In other words, an unregulated highway is actually safer than it sounds.
The Autobahn autocar plan is to launch driverless cars along the A9 Autobahn connecting Munich and Berlin. This won’t be the first time we’ve seen robocars on the highway, but the Autobahn will be the first highway system in the world to equip a stretch of highway specifically for driverless traffic. Some details are still up in the air as of the time of this writing.
Just in time, German carmaker Mercedes-Benz recently debuted an automatic car that’s basically the back of a limo without the front, featuring front seats that swivel around so that passengers can hang out without the need for a driver.
Many have feared that automatic cars simply won’t be safe. Even when we acknowledge that these cars will be able to communicate with one another, that they will always know where every other car on the same stretch highway is located at all times, and that they will be able to respond to a tricky situation thousands of times more quickly than any human driver, there are still some concerns. The most obvious concern: what happens when the system malfunctions? Another concern: what about tricky situations that call for a human to make the choice? If you lose control and have the choice between driving head-on into another vehicle or veering off of a cliff, what choice will the computer make? What if a vagrant is coming up to your car with a bottle of window cleaner and a piece of newspaper but your car doesn’t want to leave until everyone’s buckled in?
The answer to all of these questions is: who knows? The Autobahn experiment should help to change that.
What are your thoughts on an autocar, would you feel safe in one? Please leave your comments below.
